


2 + Y = 1

by Lantean_Drift



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-12
Updated: 2015-01-12
Packaged: 2018-03-07 05:32:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3163091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lantean_Drift/pseuds/Lantean_Drift
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney always knows the answer until the laws of his universe unravel right in front of him and he learns that he’s never really understood - until Sheppard comes along and shows him how to complete the most complex of simple equations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2 + Y = 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bluespirit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluespirit/gifts).



> This short was written years (and years) ago and posted on LJ but it remains one of my favourite pieces of my work. I have very fond memories of writing this and the good times we were having in the McShep fandom at the time. Therefore, it's gifted to Bluespirit because all the good memories and fun times from the McShep days are wrapped up inextricably with her and her invaluable friendship. I adore you, Hummingbird, as much today as eight years ago. You save my life and make me smile. <3.xx.

Rodney had been abnormally young when he’d first worked out this simple equation, but he still remembers the sense of triumph he felt as he carefully traced a ‘-1’ in the correct space on his piece of paper. He’d shared it with Jeannie though she hadn’t understood it at the time. He also ensured that it was the first equation she worked out for herself as soon as she was old enough. 

He remembers clearly the order and structure that this, and similar equations, gave to his tumultuous young mind. 

Numbers, problems, equations could be solved. People couldn’t. They were unsolvable and largely pointless as a concept. The ones that should have meant something came to represent nothing but pain and loneliness with alarming regularity. 

There were times in his life when Rodney wished he was ‘-1’. 

He remembers his mother’s hushed voice bundling him and Jeannie out of the house in the middle of the night. She did it a number of times and although he knew _why_ he never understood why she bothered if they were just going to go back every time. The one time it had been snowing and Rodney had slipped and fallen down. He’d cut his lip and dripped a couple of spots of dark red blood on the snow; it had looked brown under the yellow streetlight. His mother had pulled him to the car shushing him as they went but he hadn’t made a sound, it had hurt but he hadn’t cried. 

He remembers the day they buried his mother, he’d returned home from college for the funeral of a mother he hadn’t even been told was ill. It was hot that day, early August in Toronto and the heat was intense. His father had ignored Jeannie completely for reasons he never knew – but then he’d never asked. He can still see Jeannie’s face, as she had stood at the graveside, flushed pink from the heat and the tears.   
She had looked beautiful in a painful kind of way. 

It still kills him when he thinks of the day that his little sister looked at him in disgust and disappointment and told him not to contact her again until he’d learned that the answer wasn’t ‘-1’.   
There had been tears that day too, but she hadn’t looked beautiful, just unbearably sad and Rodney hadn’t understood. He’s just walked away knowing he was the wrong kind of ‘1’ but not understanding why. 

Sheppard had walked away too, or more accurately run away, with a ‘so long, Rodney’, he’d gone. Rodney had watched the dot on the screen disappear as the plan, such as it was, had worked accordingly and he’d never wanted to be minus himself as much as he did at that moment. Sheppard was dead and the basic laws of physics, of the universe, of life, unravelled and disintegrated as ‘2 – 1 = 0’.  
Then Sheppard’s voice had been relayed from the Daedalus, he was alive and well but the universe still refused to make sense – Sheppard was alive, so was Rodney, and ‘0 + 1 = 2’.

After that Rodney learned to accept that not all things in life were as structured and balanced and solvable as equations. 

.xx.

The night after Jeannie left Atlantis and returned to her husband and daughter, John had appeared in Rodney’s quarters with a purloined bottle of Zelenka’s moonshine and the two of them had got wasted. Sprawled haphazardly on the floor next to John, Rodney had tried to explain that life wasn’t an equation and challenged John to work out the ‘Y’ in ‘2 + Y = 1’. They had argued drunkenly and incoherently because John had said it was ‘–1’ and Rodney argued that it wasn’t, not always. The tame bickering had gone on for a while before John leaned forward, sloshing the contents of the bottle over his fingers and demanded to know _why_ it wasn’t always ‘–1’. Rodney had fallen silent for a moment and felt something break inside him, hot and sharp and unbearably painful as he answered that he didn’t know, he didn’t know the answer to that, John, but Jeannie said it didn’t, and she was the smartest person ever.   
They’d fallen asleep, slumped on the hard floor, John’s hand carding clumsily through Rodney’s hair. 

He remembers the look of calm, quiet contemplation on John’s face the next morning when they had woken tangled around each other…like lovers.

It had been 58 hours and 32 minutes after that, that John had walked into Rodney’s lab and snapped shut the lap top he was working on - much to Rodney’s intense irritation - and announced that he was smarter than McKay. 

“Colonel, what the hell are you going on about?” Rodney had scowled heavily and tried to reach for the laptop as John pulled it away, moving it along the workbench so he could hop up and sit on the tabletop.

“I’m smarter than you, Dr Genius, and I can prove it.”

“Really? Well feel free to prove it, here, or on the other side of the city would be fine as I’m trying to work.” 

Sheppard had caught his wrist as he reached for his computer. 

“I worked out Jeannie’s equation,” he’d said quietly and Rodney had frozen, they hadn’t talked about it in the two and a half day gap. They hadn’t mentioned it at all. 

“You – you did?” he’d tried for nonchalance and failed miserably. Rodney hadn’t really wanted to consider the possibilities of this conversation ending with a ‘0’. 

“Mmmhmm, and I’m gonna help you work it out, Rodney.”

“Why not just tell me the answer?” he’d asked, chin raised high in defiance – of what he hadn’t known. 

“Because you have to work it out for yourself or the answer doesn’t fit in the equation, but I can help you, give you all the necessary tools to solve the problem,” he had murmured, still not releasing his grip on Rodney’s wrist. 

“And how do you intend to do that?” 

“Like this,” John had pulled him close and in the middle of a deserted lab, kissed him slowly and with aching tenderness. 

Rodney had been speechless. He’d felt a buzz, a connection, like the feeling he got when he was on the verge of a major breakthrough. Only this was better. Without logical thought, without hesitation, he’d kissed John back over and over again. 

.xx.

‘2 + Y = 1’

Rodney catches John with a muffled ‘oof!’ as he drops on top of Rodney, skin against skin, sticky and hot and familiar. John drapes himself over Rodney’s chest and nestles his face against the crook of his neck. Tiny kisses rain down on his sensitised skin and Rodney can’t help but smile, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard – Big Damn Hero and Compulsive Snuggler. 

“You broke me, I may never walk again,” John grins against his neck, his words curling around the kisses he’s dropping on Rodney’s skin.

Rodney loves these moments and has treasured every one they’ve had in the last three months. The moments where John is relaxed and happy and lying heavily against him, making it hard for him to breathe in a way that has nothing to do with the weight on his chest. 

And, oh god, he knows the answer!

“John,” he shakes the beautiful man in his arms, who was unfortunately just dropping off to sleep. 

“John’s not here right now, please leave a message after the beep. Beep.” 

“I know the answer,” Rodney gushes, gratified when John raises his head and pulls back to look at him. 

“Yeah?” he asks carefully, not even pretending that he doesn’t know what Rodney’s talking about.

Rodney nods and John shifts until he he’s resting on top of Rodney, braced with his arms on either side of his head, faces just a breath apart. 

“I get it, you showed me, you showed me that the answer was never a number.” 

John smiles so beautifully at that and Rodney just has to run his hands into John’s wayward hair and pull him in for a kiss. It’s deep and long and tender and Rodney drinks it in. 

“I don’t want the answer to be a number ever again,” Rodney says quietly when they finally part, a little breathless. 

“It won’t be,” John’s head dips and their lips touch again briefly, “I love you, too.” 

Rodney smiles and kisses him again and John falls into it, into him, stealing his breath and giving him everything until Rodney can’t tell where one of them starts and the other one ends anymore. 

But now he understands why the answer isn’t ‘-1’.


End file.
